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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



KADICAUSM AND CONSERYATISM-THE TKUTH OF HISTORY VINDICATED. 



SPEECH 



HON. GEO. W. JULIAN, OF INDIANA, 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



FEBRUARY "T, 1865. 




The House being in the Committee ot the Whole on the 
State of the Uniou, imd haviug under consjdoratiou the 
President's message — 

Mr. JULIAN said : 

Mr. Chairman : Perhaps no task could be 
more instructive or profitable, in these culmina- 
ting days of the rebellion, than a review of the 
shifting phases of thought and policy which 
have guided the Administration in its endeavors 
to crush it. Such a retrospect will help us to 
vindicate the real truth of history, both as to 
measures and men. It will bring out, in the 
strongest colors, the contrast between radical- 
ism and conservatism, as rival political forces, 
each maintaining a varying control over the 
conduct of the war. It will, at the same time, 
point out and emphasize those pregnant lessons 
of the struggle which may best supply the 
Government with counsel in its further prose- 
cution. The faithful performance of this task 
demands plainness of speech ; and I shall not 
shrink from my accustomed use of it, in the in- 
terests of truth and freedom. 

At the beginning of this war, Mr. Chairman, 
neither of the parties to it comprehended its 
character and magnitude. Its actual history 
has been an immeasurable surprise to both, and 
to the whole civilized world. The rebels evi- 
dently expected to make short work of it. 
Judging us by our habitual and long-continued 
submission to Southern domination, and con- 
liding in the multiplied assurances of sympathy 
and help which they had received from their 
faithful allies in the North, they regarded the 
work of dismemberment as neither difficult nor 
exp€n8ive. They did not dream of the grand 
results which have proceeded from their mad 
enterprise. Nor does their delusion seem to 
have been at all strange or unnatural. Cer- 
tainly, it was not more remarkable than the in- 
fatuation of the Administration, and its con- 
servative friends. The Government understood 



the conflict as little, and misunderstood it as 
absolutely, as its foes. This, sir, is one of the 
lessons of the war which I think it worth while 
to have remembered. This revolt, it was be- 
lieved, was simnly a new and enlarged edition 
of Southern bluster. The Government did not 
realize the inexorable necessity of actual war, 
because it lacked the moral vision to perceive 
the real nature of the contest. To every sug- 
gestion of so dire an event it turned an averted 
face and a deaf ear. It hoped to restore order 
by making a show of war, without actually call- 
ing into play the terrible enginery of war. It 
trusted in the form, without the power of war, 
just as some people have trusted in the form, 
without the power of godliness. It will be re- 
membered that just before the battle of Ball's 
Bluff General McClellan ordered Colonel Stone 
to "make a slight demonstration against the 
rebels," which might '* have the effect to drive 
them from Leesburg.'' The Government seems 
to have pursued a like policy in dealing with 
the rebellion itself. "A slight demonstration," 
it was believed, would " have the effect" to ar- 
rest the rebels in their madness, and re-estab- 
lish order and peace in about " sixty days," 
without allowing them to be seriously hurt, and 
without unchaining the tiger of war at all. The 
philosophy of General Patterson, who kindly- 
advised that the war on our part should be 
" conducted on peace principles," was by no 
means out of fashion with our rulers, and the 
conservative leaders of opinion generally. 
Even the Commander-in-Chief of our Army 
and Navy scouted tlie idea of putting down the 
rebellion by military power. He thought the 
country was to be saved by giving up the prin- 
ciples it had fairly won by the ballot in the year 
18G0, and to the maintenance of which the new 
Administration was solemnly pledg(»d. He be- 
lieved in " conciliation," in " compromise " — 
the meanest word iu the whole vocabulary of 



E4 5? 



. ;> 



our politics, except, perhaps, the word " con- 
servative " — and Lad far less faith in the help 
of bullets and bajouets iu managing the rebels 
than iu the power of our brotherly love to melt 
their susceptible hearts, and woo them back, 
gently and lovingly, to a sense of their madness 
and their crime. Our distinguished Secretary 
of State declared that ♦• none but a despotic or 
imperial Government would seek to subjugate 
thoroughly disaffected sovereignties." The pol- 
icy of coercing the revolted States was disa- 
vowed by the Tresident himself in bis message 
to Congress of July, 1861. 

Nor did the legislative department of the 
Government, at that time, disagree with the 
executive, On the 22d day of July of the same 
year — and I say it with sorrow and shame— on 
the very morning following the tirst battle qf 
Bull Run, the House of Representatives, speak- 
ing iu the form of solemn legislative resolves, 
as did the Senate two days later, declared that 
it was not the purpose of the Government to 
" subjugate" the villains who began this work 
of organized and inexcusable rapine and mur- 
der. Indeed, it was not then the fashion to 
call them villains. In the very polite and gin- 
gerly phrase of the times they were styled 
'■ our misguided fellow-citizens," and " our err- 
ing Southern brethren," while the rebel States 
themselves were lovingly referred to as " our 
wayward sisters." The "truth is, that for about 
a year and a halt' of this war the policy of ten- 
derness to the rebels so swayed the Administra- 
tion that it seemed far less intent upon crush- 
ing the rebellion by arms, than upon contriving 
•' how 7iot to do it." General McClellan, who I 
so long palsied the energies and balked the 
l)urpose of the nation, would not allow an un- 
kind word to be uttered in his presence against 
the rebel leaders. If an officer or soldier was 
heard to speak disrespectfully of the great con- 
federate chief, he was summarily reprimanded, 
while the uurivaled reprobate and grandest of 
national cut-throats was pronounced a hifh- 
souled gentleman and mau of honor! Not the 
spirit of war, but the spirit of peace, seemed to 
dictate our princij)lcs of action and measures 
of policy toward the men who luxd resolved at 
whatever hazard or sacrifice, to break up the 
Government by force. This policy, sir, had it 
been continued, would have proved the certain 
triumph of the rebel cause. With grand ar- 
mies in the field, and all the costly machinery 
of war in our hands, our opportunities were 
Binned away by inactivity and delay, while the 
rebels gathered strength from our indecision 
and weakness. A major general in our army, 
and as brave and patriotic a man as lives, said 
to me in the early stages of the war that tlie 
grand obstacle to our success was the lack of 
resentment on our part toward traitors. He 
said we did not adequately hate them ; and he 
urged me, if in any degree in my power, to 
breathe into the hearts of the people in the 
l(jyal States a spirit of righteous indignation 
and wrath toward the rebels coniineusurate 
with the unmatched enormity of their deeds. 



This spirit, Mr. Chairman, was a military ne- 
cessity. The absence of it furnishes the best 
explanation of our failure during the period 
referred to, while its acceptance by the Govern- 
ment inaugurated the new policy which baa 
ever since been giving us victories. 

That this sickly policy of an inoffensive war 
has naturally prolonged the struggle, and 
greatly augmented its cost in blood and treas- 
ure, no one cau doubt. That it belongs, with 
its entire legacy of frightful results, exclu- 
sively to the conservative element in our poli- 
tics, which at first ruled the Government, is 
equally certain. The radical men saw at first, 
as clearly as they see to-daj-, the character and 
spirit of this rebel revolt. The massacre at 
Fort Pillow, the starvation of our soldiers at 
Richmond, and the whole black catalogue of 
rebel atrocities, have only been so many veri- 
fied predictions of the men who had studied 
the institution of slavery, and who regarded 
the rebellion as the natural fruit and culmina- 
tion of its Christless career. And hence it 
was that in the very beginning of the war, 
radical men were in favor of its vigorous prosl 
ecution. They knew the foe with whom we 
had to wrestle. In language employed on this 
floor more than three years ago, they knew that 
" sooner than fail in their purpose the rebels 
would light up heaven itself with the red glare 
of the pit, and convert the earth into a carnival 
of devils." They knew that "every weapon 
in the armory of war must be grasped, and 
every arrow in our quiver sped toward the 
heart of a rebel." They knew that "all ten- 
derness to such a foe is treason to our cause, 
murder to onr people, faithlessness to the grand- 
est and holiest trust ever committed to a free 
people." They knew that " the war should be 
made just as terrific to the rebels as possible, 
consistently with the laws of war, not as a 
work of vengeance, but of mercy, and the 
•surest means of our triumph." They knew 
that in struggling with such a foe we were 
shut up to one grand and inevitable necessity 
and duty, and that was entire and absolute 
suhjuijation. All this was avowed and insisted 
upon by the earnest men who understood the 
nature of the conflict, and as persistently dis- 
avowed and repudiated by the Government 
and its conservative advisers. 

liut a lime came when its lessons had to be 
unlearned. In the school of trial it was forced 
to admit that war does not mean peace 
but exactly the opposite of peace. Slowly, 
and step by step, it yielded up its theories 
and brought itself face to face with the stern 
facts of the crisis. The Government no longer 
gets frightened at the word sul jugate, because 
of its literal etymology, but is manfully and 
successfully endeavoring to place the yoke of 
tlie Constitution upon the unbaptised necks of 
the scoundrels who have thrown it off. The 
war is now recognized as a struggle of numbers, 
of desperate physical violence, to be fought 
out to the bitter end, without stopping to count 
its cost in money or in blood. Both the pec- 



B 



pie and our armies, under this ne^ dispensa- 
tion, have been learning how lo hate rebels as 
Christian patriots ought to have done from the 
beginning. They have been learning how to ] 
hate rebel sympathizers also, and to brand them 
as even meaner than rebels outright. They 
regard the open-throated traitor, who stakes 
his life, his property, his all, upon the success 
of his conspiracy against the Constitution aud 
the rights of man, as a more tolerable charac- 
ter than the skulking miscreant who in his 
heart wishes the rebellion God-speed, while 
masquerading in the hypocritical disguise of 
loyalty. Had the Government been animated 
by a like spirit at the beginning of the out- 
break, practically accepting the truth that there 
can be no middle ground between treason and 
loyalty, rebel sympathizers would have given 
the country far less trouble than they have 
done. A little wholesome severity, summarily 
administered, would have been a most sovereign 
panacea. On this point the people were in ad- 
vance of the Administration, and they are to- 
I day. Their earnestness has not yet found a 
I complete and authoritative expression in the 
action of the Government. A system of retal- 
iation, which would have been a measure of 
real mercy, has not yet been adopted. Our 
cause is not wholly rescued from the control of 
conservative politicians and geaerals. Much 
remains to be done ; but far more, certainly, 
has already been accomplished. The times of 
brotherly love towards rebels in arms have 
gone by forever. Such men as McGlellan, 
Bueli, and Filz John Poner, are generally out 
of the way, and men who believe in iightivij 
' rebels are in active command. This revolution 
in the war policy of the Government, as already 
observed, was absolutely necessary to the sal- 
vation of our cause ; and the country will not 
soon forget those earnest men who at first com- 
prehended the crisis and the duty, and persist- 
ently urged a vigorous policy, suited to re- 
morseless and revolution:iry violence, till the 
Government felt constrained to embrace it. 

Bat a vigorous prosecution of the war, 5Ir. 
Chairman, was not enough. While this strug- 
gle is one of numbers and of violence, it is 
likewise, and still more emphatically, a war of 
ideas ; a conflict between two forms of civiliza- 
tion, each wresting for the mastery of the 
country. No one now pretends to dispute this, 
I nor is it easy to understand how any one could 
ever have failed to perceive it. But the Gov- 
' ernment, in the beginning, did not believe it. 
It tried, with all its might, not to believe it. and 
to persuade the world to disbelieve it. It in- 
sisted that the real cause of the war did not 
cause it at all. The rebellion was the work of 
chance; a stupendous accident, leaping into 
life fall-grown, without father or mother, with- 
out any discoverable genesis. It was a huge, 
black, portentous, national riot, which must be 
suppressed, but nobody was to be allowed to 
say cne word about the causes which produced 
it, or the issues involved in the struggle. Si- 
lence was to be our supreme wisdom. Hence 



it was that the Government, speaking through 
its high functionaries, declared that the slavery 
question was not involved in the quarrel, and 
that every .slave in bondage would remain in 
exactly the same condition after the war as be- 
fore. Hence it was that, when a celebrated 
proclamation was issued, giving freedom to 
slaves of rebels in Missouri, it was revoked by 
the Government in order to please the State of 
Kentucky, and placate the power that began 
the war. Hence, under General H.iUeck's 
" Oraer No. 3," which remained in force more 
than a year, the swarms of contrabands who 
came thronging to our lines, tendering us the 
use of their muscles and the secrets of itie rebel 
prison-house, were driven away by our com- 
manders. Hence it was that our soldiers were 
compelled to serve as slave-hounds in chasing 
down fugitives and sending them back to rebel 
masters, and that General McGlellan, who al- 
ways loved slavery more than he loved his 
country, and who declared he would put down 
slave insurrections •' with an iron hand," was 
continued as commander-in-chief of our armies 
long months after the country desired to spew 
him out. Hence, likewise, so many thousands 
of our soldiers were compelled to dig and ditch 
in the swamps of the Chickahominy till the 
cold sweat of death gathered on the handle of 
the spade, while swarms of stalwart negroes, 
able to relieve them and eager to do so, were 
denied the privilege, lest it should ofl'end the 
nostrils of democratic gentility, and give aid 
and comfort to the Abolitionists. Hence it 
was that the President, instead of striking at 
slavery as a military necessity, and while re- 
buking that policy in his dealings with Hunter 
and Fremont, was at the same time so earnestly 
espousing chimerical projects for the coloniza- 
tion of negroes, coupled with the policy of 
gradual and compensated emancipation, which 
should take place some time before the year 
1000, if the slaveholders should be willing. 
Hence it was that very soon after the Adminis- 
tration had been installed in power it bt-gau to 
lose sight of the principles on which it hadtri- 
umnhed in 1860, allowing four-fifths of the of- 
fices of the army and navy to be held by men of 
known hostility to those principles, while the 
various departments of the Government iu this 
city were largely filled by rebel sympathizers. 
Hence it was that for nearly two years of this 
war the Government, while smiting the rebels 
with one hand, was with the other guarding 
the slave property and protecting the constitu- 
tional rights of the men who had renounced 
the Constitution, and ceased lo have any rights 
under it save the right to its penalty against 
traitors. Hence it was that during the greater 
part of this time the Administration stood upon 
the platform and urged the policy of "the Con- 
stitution as it is and the Union as it was,'' 
which the nation so overwhelmingly repudiated 
in the late presidential contest. Hence it was 
finally, that the songs of Whittier could not bo 
sung in our armies ; that slavery waa every- 
where dealt with by the Goverament as the 



dear child of its love ; and that our rulers 
seemed, with matchless impiety, to hope for 
the ftivor of God without laying hold of the 
conscience of our cjuarrel, and by coolly kicking 
it out of doors I Sir, I believe it safe to say 
that this madness cost the nation the precious 
sacrifice of fifty thousand soldiers, who have 
gone up to the throne of God as witnesses 
against the horrid infatuation that so long 
shaped the policy of the Government in resist- 
ing this slaveholders' rebellion. 

liut here, again, Mr. Chairman, the Govern- 
ment had to unlearn its first lessons. Its pur- 
pose to crush the rebellion and spare slavery 
was found to be utterly suicidal to our cause. 
It was a purpose to accomplish a moral impos- 
sibility, and was therefore prosecuted, if not. 
conceived, in the interest of the rebels. It was 
an attempt to marry treason and loyalty ; for 
the rebellion is slavery, armed with the powers 
of war, organized for wholesale schemes of ag- 
gression, and animated by the overflowing full- 
ness of its infernal genius. The strength of 
our cause lies in its righteousness, and there- 
fore no bargain with the devil could possibly 
give it aid. Through great sulferiug and sacri- 
fice, individual and national, our rulers learned 
that there is but " one strong thing here below, 
the just thing, the true thing," and that God 
would not allow these severed States to be re- 
united without the abandonment, forever, of 
our great national sin. This was a difficult 
lesson, but as it was gradually mastered the 
Government " changed its base." It became 
disenchanted. Congress took the lead in ush- 
ering in the new dispensation. A new Article 
of War was enacted, forbidding our armies from 
returning fugitive slaves. Slavery was abol- 
ished in the District of Columbia, and prohib- 
ited in our national Territories, where it had 
been i)lanted by the dogma of popular sover- 
eignty and the Dred Scott decision. Our Fed- 
eral judiciary was so reorganized as to make 
sure this anti-slavery legislation of Congress. 
The confiscation of slaves was provided for, 
and freedom offered to all who would come over 
and help us, either as laborers or soldiers, thus 
annulling the famous and infmnous order of 
General Halleck, already referred to. The fu- 
gitive slave law was at first made void as to the 
slaves of rebels, and finally repealed altogether, 
with the old law of 1793. The coastwise slave 
trade, a frightful system of home i)iracy, carried 
on by authority of Congress since the year 1807, 
was totally abolished. The right of testimony 
in our Federal courts, and to sue and be sued, 
was conferred upon negroes. Their einploy- 
ment as soldiers was at last systematically pro- 
vided for, and their j)ay at length maile the 
same as that of white soldiers. 'J'ho indepen- 
dence of Ilayti and Liberia was recognized, and 
new measures taken to put an end to the Afri- 
can slave trade. In thus wiping out our code 
of national slave laws, acknowledgihgthe man- 
Bood of the negro, and recognizing (slavery as 
the enemy of our peace, Congress emphatically 
rebuked the policy which had sought to ignore 



it, and to shield it from the destructive band of 
the war instigated by itself; while it opened 
the way for further and inevitable measures of 
justice, looking to his complete emancipation 
from the dominion of Anglo-Saxon prejudice, 
the repeal of all special legislation intended for 
his injury, and his absolute restoration to equal 
rights with the white man as a citizen as well 
as a soldier. 

Meanwhile, the President bad been giving 
the subject his sober second thought, and re- 
considering his position at the beginning of the 
conflict. Instead of affirming, as at first, that 
the question of slavery was not involved in the 
struggle, he gradually perceived and finally 
admitted that it was at once the cause of the 
war and the obstacle to peace. Instead of re- 
solving to save the Union with slavery, he finally 
resolved to save the Union without it, and by 
its destruction. Instead of entertaining the 
country with projects of gradual and distant 
emancipation, conditioned upon compensation 
to the master and the colonization of the freed- 
men, he himself finally launched the policy of 
immediate and unconditional liberation. In- 
stead of recoiling from "radical and extreme 
measures," and '"a remorseless revolutionary 
conflict," he at last marched up to the full 
height of the national emergency, and pro- 
claimed " to all whom it may concern," that 
slavery must parish. Instead of a constitu- 
tional amendment for the purpose of eternizing 
the institution in the Republic, indorsed by 
him in his inaugural message, he became the 
zealous advocate of a constitutional amend- 
ment abolishing it forever. Instead of com- 
mitting the fortunes of the war to pro-slavery 
commanders, whose hearts were not in the 
work, he learned how to dispense with their 
services, and find the proper substitutes. These 
forward movements were not ventured upon 
hastily, but after much hesitation and apparent 
reluctance. Not suddenly, but following great 
deliberation and many misgivings, he issued 
his proclamation of freedom. Months after- 
ward he doubted its M'isdom ; but it was a 
grand step forward, which at once severed his 
relations with his old conservative friends, and 
linked his fortunes thenceforward to those of 
the men of ideas and of progress. Going hand 
in hand with Congress in the great advance 
measures referred to, or acquiescing in their 
adoption, the whole i)olicy of the Administra- 
tion has been revolutionized. Abolitionism and 
loyalty are now accepted as convertible terms, 
and so are treason and slavery. Our covenant 
with death is annulled. Our national partner- 
ship with Satan hns been dissolved; and just 
in proportion as this has been done, and an 
alliance sought with divine Providence, has the 
cause of our country prospered. In a word, 
Radicalism has saved our nation from the 
political damnation and ruin to which conser- 
vatism would certainly have consigned it; 
while the mistakes and failures of the Ad- 
ministration stand confessed in its new policy, 
which alono can vindicate its wisdom, com- 



inand the respect and gratitude of the people, 
and save it from humiliation and disgrace. 

Mr. Chairman, these lessons of the past sug- 
gest the true moral of this great conflict, and 
make the way of the future plain. The)' de- 
mand a vigorous prosecution of the war by all 
the powers of war, and that the last vestige of 
slavery shall be scourged out of life. Let the 
Administration falter on either of these points 
and the people will disown its policy. They 
have not chosen the President for another term 
through any secondary or merely personal con- 
siderations. In the presence of so grand an 
issue, men were nothing. They had no faith iu 
General McClellan and the party leaders at his 
heels. They had little faith in the early policy 
of Mr. Lincoln, when Democratic ideas ruled 
his Administration, and the power of slavery 
held him in its grasp. Had his appeal to the 
people been made two years earlier, he would 
have been as overwhelmingly repudiated as he 
has been gloriously indorsed. The people sus- 
tain him now, because of their assured faith 
that he will not hesitate to execute their will. 
In voting for him for a second term, they voted 
for liberating and arming the slavi s of the South 
to crush out a slaveholders' rebellion. They 
voted that the Republic shall live, and that 
whatever is necessary to save its life shall be 
done. They voted that slavery shall be eter- 
nally doomed, and future rebellions thus made 
impossible. They voted, not that Abraham Lin- 
coln can save the country, but that they can 
save it, with him as their servant. That is what 
was decided in the late elections. I have par- 
ticipated, somewhat actively, in seven presi- 
dential contests, and 1 remember none in which 
the element of personal enthusiasm had a 
smaller share than that of last November. One 
grand and overmastering resolve filled the 
hearts and swayed the purposes of the masses 
everywhere, and that was the rescue of the 
country through the defeat of the Chicago plat- 
form and conspirators. In the execution of 
that resolve they lost sight of everything else ; 
but should the President now place himself in 
the people's way, by reviving the old policy of 
tenderness to the rebels and their beloved insti- 
tution, the loyal men of the country will aban- 
dou his policy as decidedly as they have sup- 
ported it generously. They have not approved 
the mistakes either of the legislative or execu- 
tive department of the Government, they ex- 
pect that Congress will pass a bill for the con- 
liscation of the fee of rebel landholders, and 
they expect the President will approve it. They 
expect that Congress will provide for the recon- 
struction of the rebel States by systematic legis- 
lation, which shall guaranteerepublican govern- 
ments to each of those States, and the com- 
plete enfranchisement of the negro ; and they 
will not approve, as they have not approved, of 
any executive interference with the people's will 
as deliberately expressed by Congress. They 
expect that Congress will provide for parceling 
out the forfeited and confiscated lands of rebels 
in small homestejids among the soldiers and 



seamen of the war, as a fit reward for their 
valor, and a security against the ruinous mo- 
nopoly of the soil in the South ; and they will 
be disappointed should this great measure fail 
through the default either of Congress or the 
Executive. They demand a system of just re- 
taliation against the rebels for outrages com- 
mitted upon our prisoners ; that a policy of 
increasing earnestness and vigor shall prevail 
till the war shall be ended ; and that no hope 
of peace shall be whispered, save on condition 
of an absolute and unconditional surrender to 
our authority ; and the Government will only 
prolong the war by standing iu the way of these 
demands. This is emphatically the people's 
war ; and it will not any longer suffice to say 
that the people are not ready for all necessary 
measures of success. The people would have 
been ready for such measures from the begin- 
ning, if the Government had led the way. At 
every stage of the contest they have hailed 
with joy every earnest man who came forward, 
and every vigorous war measure that has been 
proposed. So long as the war was conducted 
under the counsels of conservatives, and in the 
interests of slavery, the people clamored against 
the Administration ; but just so soon as the 
Government entered upon a vigorous policy, and 
proclaimed war agHinst slavery, the people be- 
gan to shout for the Union and liberty. In the 
fall of 1862, before the Administration was di- 
vorced from its early policy, the Union party 
was overwhelmed at the polls. But we tri- 
umphed the next year, and gloriously triumphed 
last year, because the Government yielded to 
the popular demand. The plea often urged 
that the people were not ready, is less a fact 
than a pretext. The men who loved slavery 
more than they loved the Union were never 
ready for radical measures. They are not ready 
to-day. On the other baud, the men who were 
all the while unconditionally for the Union 
would have sustained the Administration far 
more heartily in the most thorough and sweep- 
ing war measures, than they sustained its pol- 
icy of delaying those measures to the last hour. 
The truth is, the people have stood by the Gov- 
ernment for the sake of the cause, whether its 
policy pleased them or not. Their faith and 
patience have been singularly unflinching 
throughout the entire struggle. They would not 
distrust the President without the strongest 
reasons. They were ever ready to credit him 
with good intentions, and to presume in favor 
of his superior means of knowledge. When 
General Fremont was recalled from Missouri, 
and Genei-al Butler from New Orleans, the peo- 
ple pocketed their deep disappointment, and 
quietly acquiesced. When General Buell was 
kept in command so long after his inelliciency 
had been demonstrated and his loyalty ques- 
tioned, both by the country and the men under 
his command, the people bore it with uncom- 
mon patience and long-suilering. They dis- 
played the same virtues in the case of General 
McClellan, and other rebel sympathizers, who 
found favor with the Admiuiatration long after 



the country would have sent them adrift. Sir, 
this feeling of unconquerable respect for our 
chosen rulers, this Anglo-Sfixon regard for con- 
stituted authority, has been evinced by the 
people through all the phases of the war. Mosi 
Hssuredly it would not have been found want- 
ing had the Government inaugurated a radical 
policy, instead of a conservative one, during the 
first year and a half of the struggle. The 
people who endure<l McL'lellan, and Uuell, and 
Halleck, would have endured Fremont, and 
Hunter, and Butler. If the conservative Union- 
ists of Kentucky were not ready for the procla- 
mation of freedom to the slaves of Missouri 
rebels, there were millions of people outside of 
Kentucky who were not ready to have it re- 
voked. I agree that slavery had done much to 
drug the conscience of the country with its in- 
sidious poison. I know that we had so long 
made our bed with slaveholders that kicking 
them out was rather an awkward business. 
As brethren, living under a common Govern- 
ment, we had long journeyed together, and our 
habits and traditions naturally took the form 
of obstacles to a just policy in dealing with 
them as rebels and public enemies. It was by 
no means easy at once to recognize them as 
such. All this is granted, and that in the be- 
ginning the country was not prepared for every 
radical measure of legislation and war now 
being employed by the Government. But it 
was the duty of the Administration to do its 
part in preparing the country. Clothed with 
solemn official authority, and intrusted by the 
nation with the sworn duty of serving it in such 
a crisis, it had no right to become the foot-ball 
of events. It had no right, at such a time, to 
make itself, a negitivo expression, or an un- 
known quantity, in the algebra which was to 
work out the grand problem. It had no right 
to take shelter beneath a debauched and sickly 
public sentiment, and plead it in bar of the 
great duty imposed upon it by the crisis. It 
had no right, certainly, to lag behind that sen- 
timent, (o magnify its extent and potency, and 
to become its virtual ally, instead of endeavor- 
ing to control it, and to indoctrinate the 
country with ideas suited to the emergency. 
Tbe power of the Government in molding the 
general opinion and feeling was immense, and 
its responsibility must be measured accordingly. 
The revocation of the first anti-slavery procla- 
mation of this war cliilled the heart of every 
earnest loyalist in the land, and came like a 
trumpet-call to the pro-slavery hosts to rally 
and stand together. They obeyed it, and from 
that event dates the birth of organized copper- 
head democracy. The I'ebels of the South and 
their sympathizers in the North felt that they 
had gained an ally in the President. Had he 
sustained that measure, would not its moral 
effect have been at leant as potent on the other 
aide '! Had his ollicial name and sanction been 
as often given to tiie cause of radicalism as 
they were lent to that of pro-slavery conserva- 
tism would not the country have been much 
eoouer prepared for the saving aad only policy ? 



If he had said, early in the struggle, "to all 
whom it may concern," what he says now, that 
slavery is tbe nation's enemy, and therefore must 
be destroyed, instead of sheltering it under the 
Constitution and sparing it from the hand of 
war, how grandly could he have "organized 
victory" and multiplied himself among the 
people ! Sir, our traditionary respect for slavery 
and slaveholders was our grand peril. It 
stood up as an impassable barrier in the way 
of any successful war for the Union. So long 
as it was allowed to dominate, it unnerved the 
arm of the Government and deadened the spirit 
of the people. It made the Old World our ene- 
my, and threatened us v/ith foreign war. The 
mission of the Government was not to make 
this feeling stronger by deferring to it, or to 
doom the country to a prolonged war and de- 
plorable sacrifices as the best means of teaching 
the people the truth. No. The country needed 
a speedy exodus from the bondajje of false 
ideas, and the Government should have pointed 
the way. A frank statement by it of the real 
issue of the war, without any disposition to 
cover up the truth : an unmistaka'de hostility 
to slavery as the organized ctirse, without which 
the rebellion would have been impossible; and 
the timely utterance in its leading State papers 
of a few bold and spirit-stirring words which 
might have been "half battles," appealing to 
the courage and manhood of the nation, would 
have gone far to educate the judgment and 
conscience of the people, and command their 
enthusiastic espousal of whatever measures 
would jjromise most siteedily to end the strug- 
gle and economize its cost in property and life. 
Mf. Chairman, I take no pleasure, certainly, in 
thus freely di>jcu3s-ing the policy of the Gov- 
ernment in its endeavors to meet its great re- 
sponsibilities during this war. I have only 
referred to its mistakes a^ a servant of the 
truth, and in the name of the great cause 
which has been made to suffer. I believe, re- 
ligiously, in the freedom of speech. From the 
beginning of the war 1 liave exercised the right 
of frank, friendly, and fearless criticism of tlie 
conduct of our rulers, wherever 1 believed them 
to have been in the wrong. I shall continue 
to exercise it to the end ; and if I should not, 
through any personal or prudential considera- 
tions, I would be unworthy of the seat I have 
occupied on this floor. Criticism has dictated 
the present policy of the Government, and is 
still a duty. Thi-i great battle for the rights 
of man, and the actors in it, must be judged. 
None of them can " escane history." The 
fame of none of thein is so precious a.<» the 
truth, and us public justice, which cares for 
the dead as well as the living, for the common 
soldiers slain by thousands, as well as for the 
genenil and the statesman. The President, 
his advisers, his commanding generals, and the 
civilians whose shaping hamis have had so 
much to do with the conduct of the war, must 
all of them be weighed in the balance by the 
people and the generations to come. "The 
great soul of tbe world is just," and soonor or 



later all disguises will be thrown off, and every 
historical character will stand forth as he is, 
in the light of his deeds and deserts. The 
men who have been intrusted with the concerns 
of the nation in this momentous crisis will not 
be judged harshly. Much will be forgiven or 
excused on the score of the surpassing magni- 
tude and difficulty ot their work. Justice will 
be done ; but that justice may brand as a 
crime, the bhinders proceeding from a feeble, 
timid, ambidextrous policy, resulting in great 
sacrifices of life and treasure, and periling the 
priceless interests at stake. I would award all 
due honor to this Administration, and to the 
statesmen and generals who have been faithful 
to their high trusts; but I would award an 
equal honor to the rank and file of the people, 
who have inspired its present policy, and to the 
rank and file of our soldiers, who have saved 
the country in spite of the mistakes of the 
Government, the strifes of our politicians, and 
the rivalries of our generals. These are 
the real heroes of the war. Untitled, practi- 
cally unrewarded, facing every form of priva- 
tion and danger, and animated by the purest 
patriotism, the common soldier is not only the 
true hero of the war, but the real saviour of 
Lis country. 

But a higher honor, if not a more enduring 
fame, will be the heritage of the anti-slavery 
pioneers and prophets of our land; for 
" Peace bath higher tests of manhood 
Ihan battle ever knew.'' 

Without their heroic labors and sacrifices the 
Republic, " heir of all the ages," would have 
been the mightiest slave empire of the world. 
In an age of practical atheism and mammon- 
■wor.-hip, when the Church and the State joined 
hands with Slavery as the new trinity of the 
nation's faith, they really believed in God, in 
justice, in the resistless might of the truth. 
They believed that liberty is the birthright of 
all men, and their grand mission was the prac- 
tical vindication of this truth. They believed, 
with their whole hearts, in the Declaration of 
Independence. They accepted its teachings as 
coincident with the gospel of Christ, and sup- 
ported by reason and justice. It was their 
ceaseless " battle-cry of freedom," and they 
chanted it as " the fresh, the matin song of the 
universe," to the enslaved of all races and 
lands. They were branded as fanatics and in- 
fidels, and encountered everywhere the hoot- 
ings of the multitude and the scorn of politi- 
cians and priests ; but I know of no class of 
men who were ever more far-sighted, whose 
convictions rested on so broad a basis of Chris- 
tian morals and logic, and whose religious trust 
was so strong and so steadfast. For them 
there was no " eclipse of faith." Just as the 
nation began to lapse from the grand ideas of 
our revolutionary era, they began to "cry 
aloud and spare not," and they never ceased 
or slackened their labors. Placing their ears 
to the ground in the infancy and weakness of 
their movement, they caught the rumbling 
thunders of civil war in the distance, warned 
the country of its danger, and preached repent- 



ance as the chosen and only means of escape. 
They were compelled to face mobs, violence, 
persecution, and death, and were always mis- 
understood or misrepresented : but they never 
faltered. Reputation, honors, property, world- 
ly ease, were all freely laid upon the altar of 
duty, in their resolve to vindicate the rights of 
man and the freedom of speech. To follow 
these apostles and martyrs was to forsake all 
the prizes of life which worlaly prudence or 
ambition could value or covet. It was to take 
up the heaviest cross yet fashioned hv this 
century as the test of Christian character and 
heroism ; and those who bore it were far braver 
spirits than the men who fight our battles on 
land and sea. 

Mr. Chairman, the failure of men thus de- 
voted to a great and holy cause was morally 
impossible. They could not fail. Through 
their courage, constancy, and faith, they gradu- 
ally received the co-operation or sympathy of 
the better type of men of all parties and creeds. 
They seriously disturbed, or broke in pieces, 
the great political and ecclesiastical organiza- 
tions of the land ; and even before this war 
their ideas were rapidly taking captive the 
popular heart. When it came, they saw, as by 
intuition, tbe character of the struggle, as the 
final phase of slaveholding madness and crime, 
and insisted upon the early adoption of thai, 
radical policy which the Government at last was 
compelled to accept. I believe it safe to say 
that the moral appeals and persistent criticism 
of these men, and of the far greater numbers 
who borrowed or sympathized with their views, 
saved our cause from the complete control of 
conservatism, and thus saved the country itself 
from destruction. Going at once to the heart 
of our great conflict, they pointed out the only 
remedy, and felt compelled to reprobate the 
failure of the Government to adopt it. They 
judged its policy in war, as they had done ia 
peace, in the light of its fidelity or infidelity to 
human rights. By this test tliey tried every 
man and party, and they need ask for no other 
rule of judgment lor themselves. The Admin- 
istration, and the chief actors in this drama of 
war, of whatever political school, must be 
weighed in the same great balance. Not even 
the founders of th'e Republic will be spared 
from the trial. In their compromise with 
slavery in the beginning, which is now seen 
to have been the genu of this horrid conflict, they 
"swerved from the right."' Posterity must so 
pronounce ; and the record which dims the 
luster of their great names will be read in tlie 
flames of this war as a warning against all fu- 
ture compacts with evil. Justice to public men 
is as certain as that truth is omnipotent. It 
may be delayed for a season ; it may be bidden 
from the vision of men of little faith ; but its 
final triumph is sure. To the world's true he- 
roes and confessors history ever sends its word 
of cheer : 

" The good can well afford to wait; 

Give ermined kuavcs their liour of crime ; 
Ye have the future, grand and groat, 
The safe appeal of truth to lime." 



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